[Mod] FX Graphics beef up v02

Feedback welcome

  • If you download this mod leave a comment about what sucks and would could be better please :wink: While i do it just for fun, and use it myself extensively i still like to know if this is better or worse to original fx graphics. As the one creating it i am not really able to judge it ;p

  • Updated to Version 02

Lo, i found some nasty error in the previous mod (i accidentally forgot to change an important value!) so now the smoke will actually stay longer.

This mod changes smoke to last longer and be denser, but not too dense
Also this mod uses a particles.dds that has the color map of the original and my alpha maps (which i think look great together)

This is the final version of the mod - I am happy with the smoke and all things now…

Changes in V02 compared to V01

  • Made the mod actually do what it was supposed to do
  • Smoke now has again some grey values so that it is not a humongous black mass
  • Most smoke effects now have not 100% density so as to allow you still seeing something

What does it do?
-Smoke from fighter deaths and anti fighter explosions now really lasts longer (sorry about before!)
-Large explosions will now cover substantial amounts of ship estate with smoke
-Makes smoke less fluffy
-Death Explosion causes huge smoke coverage
-Wreckage smoke now spawns slower and wider
fx mod v02.rar (114 KB)

What program you used to open/modify/create those dds files?

Photoshop Cs3 with Nvidia DDS plugin :wink: Oh yeah… i figure some people here have been writing about white boxes when saving dds files

To save the file after you edited it you have to select
5DXT - ARGB - 8bit Interpolated Alpha - all game files use 8bit alpha (that means alpha with grey values)

Edit: Of course, the other thing is that you have to edit both RGB and Alpha channel (in photoshop you can click on Channels and select the one you want) and when making new hulls, once also has to make a alpha channel (many ways for that ,p)

My only beef atm is that the explosions that have a sprite sequence are all in one file, what sounds nice for ordering files is a horrible way to save animations because it doesn’t allow for overglow (that means that explosions connect when blended in some fashion) because the frame sizes can not be increased

Gratuitously nice!

:smiley: Thanks ^^

Well i was just playing around eh… I am sure when people edit the effect files they can make even better explosions n’stuff.

I thought I’d get flamed for posting such a useless mod heh ;p

I updated the posted rar file - Now the mod does what it was actually supposed to do! Blimey, i didn’t notice that there was a alpha-fadeout value! :wink:

BTW which folder does this mod go in? or does it just go in the main folder?

sorry i forgot that i deleted the install description in the update ;p

After you extracted the rar the particleconfigs and bitmaps folder go both into \Positech Games\Gratuitous Space Battles\data
If you have the Impulse version its under C:\Program Files (x86)\Positech Games\Gratuitous Space Battles\data

For other versions i do not know :wink:

You can also choose not to overwrite the bitmaps folder, you get the same long staying smoke with the original graphics (might wanna try how both things look before you overwrite something)

If you want to revert you can just check for update in impulse and it will redownload original files

really? i didn’t get bitmaps or particleconfigs folder when i downloaded your mod – only the mod itself. or do you mean that i copy and extract the mod into both folders?

:slight_smile: You have to get Winrar or 7zip (unpacking apps) to unpack the rar file.

The rar file contains the mod and to use it you have 1) unpack it and 2) move the folders into your install dir of gsb

I believe you don’t know that i have a mac OS X and that i’m using crossover, a PC emulator. usually, all i have to do is download it, put it in the folder, and bang. do the same rules apply for PC as they do Mac? EDIT: Ok, here’s the easy way. just tell me which format it must be in and where it must go and it’ll work. probably.

whether you’re using crossover or not won’t make a blind bit of difference to the pc files/paths.

the rar contains a folder called “mod”. that contains two other folders. those two folders need copying into the GSB-install/data directory. the ‘mod’ folder is just a holder - it’s irrelevant (and arguably confusing, but at this stage of game modding you’re blitting straight over core game files, so i can understand why modders might make it such that their mods do no damage at all unless you know what/are sure of what you’re doing).

grrrr. i said already, it only downloads the mod itself. do i somehow have to get into the mod and find the folders? only the rar installs. it’s a file, not a folder.

Hybrinoid, the other players have provided good advice for you. All you need to do is adapt it to your circumstances, as I have.

I’m also a Mac user, with a constructive suggestion for you: the problem may not necessarily lie with the mod, but with the Mac. Read on…

You need to do some homework and find an app that you can install which knows how to play nicely with archive types that lie just outside of those of the standard Mac user environment

The app called BOMArchiveHelper built into OS X is not robust enough to correctly work with .rar archives. Even Apple itself admits this. I have had good fortune with The Unarchiver, which is now up to version 2.1. If you wish to try it, it can be found here on the Apple website. I find it vastly more useful than BOMA, or even Stuffit Expander.

I can easily extract the mod within the .rar archive and it beautifully opens into all of its component parts. It’s not a single monolithic file. From there, installation should be easy.

Good luck and good modding to you! :slight_smile:

thanks. and BTW where do you receive this homework? xD EDIT: Hooray! It worked! Looks like I did have to extract it after all, instead of just putting it into the folder! But the reason i didn’t actually try to extract it is because i don’t have to do that with txt files. i thought it was all the same. yay, now i can do rar! hooray!

You have to open that mod.rar file or extract it or unrar it. It’s a compressed packet which you have to uncompress. Then it contains files inside it.

It’s like opening a christmas present. The nice looking packet itself with those nice looking papers isn’t the present itself but what is inside is the real present.

Start to get it? You need to open that mod.rar file then you see those folders which you need to copy.

Hah, well … glad that confusion is sorted ,)

You know, thats a real funny issue though - i never figured mac osx wouldn’t give the option to unpack a rar (at least from alone), thats pretty much the mainstay archive format (and unlike zip, i packs dds files wonderfully ,p). Well i hope it works fine, and that said - i still haven’t received a single post of feedback :wink:

You know, does it suck or not? What sucks, and what not… ;p

I should probably pack my next mod as zip file though :wink:

Edit: That aside - the MOD folder is a protection indeed… At this stage these mods modify core files so not only can they break your game any version (works still fine with 1.18 afaik) but they also not removable without a reinstall - this is different from the item/weapon mods that are simple parsed by the game and so don’t need to overwrite anything.

yep, it’s AWESOME! you said before that it’s “such a useless mod”. do you still think that? because i don’t.